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At Southwest Airlines, the Minutes After Disaster Struck

How top management, using updates from the cockpit and passengers’ phones, put the emergency-response plan into action in Philadelphia and Dallas

Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 plane sits on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing on April 17.
Photo:
David Maialetti/The Philadelphia Inquirer/Associated Press

All
Southwest Airlines
senior executives were at a Dallas hotel for a day-long meeting on leadership development last week when suddenly phones blared in unison around the room: Flight 1380 was in serious trouble.

The team had a quick conference call with the airline’s operation center, then raced to headquarters nearby. From there they put an emergency-response plan into action.

The plan had gotten a lot of use in the past year: three hurricanes, plus mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, near San Antonio. All required extensive coordination and interaction with customers. But nothing prepared executives for the kick in the gut they got when passenger Jennifer Riordan died.

“We’ve never had a passenger fatality. It affects everyone,” Chief Executive Gary Kelly said in his first extensive interview since the accident.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane.
Photo:
NTSB/Associated Press

How companies respond to crises, especially those broadcast live and spread world-wide on social media, has become a major test.

Airlines have a lot of practice: The grim reality is that accidents sometimes kill customers. Cellphone video has made aviation accidents and incidents more terrifying and troubling for the flying public. In the case of Southwest 1380, when an engine ruptured on a New York-to-Dallas trip and shrapnel broke a window, blowing the 43-year-old Ms. Riordan partly out of the airplane, we see the fear the passengers were experiencing like never before.

The photos, video and tweets also kept the airline better-informed about what was happening, and heightened the need for the airline to quickly respond.

The Wall Street Journal used video shared on social media and other reporting to piece together how the engine on Southwest Airlines flight 1380 broke apart, ultimately killing a passenger and forcing an emergency landing. Photo: Marty Martinez

Crisis communications experts have applauded that public response as timely and effective. Mr. Kelly quickly delivered a 40-second video apology. The airline issued multiple updates with brief facts after the April 17 event. The pilots who got the plane quickly to safe altitude, then onto the ground, were hailed as heroes.

“It is hard to argue with a leader who immediately shows contrition through honest and heartfelt condolences,” says David Castelveter, a former airline communications executive who worked five different fatal airline accidents.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation that will pick apart Southwest’s maintenance program could ultimately find fault with the airline or criticize it for not accelerating engine inspections sooner, possibly changing public perception. A conclusive report isn’t expected for at least a year.

Beyond the brief news conferences and statements, much more was happening behind the scenes.

Mr. Kelly says Southwest’s immediate focus was making sure it had resources in Philadelphia, where the flight made its emergency landing, to take care of customers. The airline sent a plane from Dallas loaded with Southwest employees trained to be part of an accident response “go team.”

Some were assigned to individual passengers to help with travel arrangements and even trauma counseling. Others were sent to aid investigators and some to relieve local airport workers pulled from regular duties by the emergency.

“Everybody has a checklist,” Mr. Kelly says.

One early item on his own checklist: Call the heads of the Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB. “The protocol is well understood. It’s just to affirm that this is how we are going to work together. We are here to support the NTSB,” Mr. Kelly says.

Four Southwest employees flew to Albuquerque, Ms. Riordan’s home, to help her family with travel arrangements. The airline also quickly pulled advertising from social media.

More than 50 of the 144 passengers onboard decided to stay in Philadelphia hotels overnight the first day. Southwest had letters slipped under their doors to remind them that people were on site that night and the next day to offer assistance, if they wanted. Some flew home the next day on other airlines; others took trains or drove. Close to 90 passengers opted for a Southwest flight to Dallas Tuesday evening just for survivors.

On the second day, passengers received personal phone calls and emails offering resources, including counseling services. Karie Lardon, Southwest’s director of emergency response, directed hundreds of employees responding to the accident.

The airline sent each passenger a $5,000 check plus a $1,000 travel voucher for future Southwest flights. The amounts were decided after looking at previous payouts for far less-serious episodes. Ms. Lardon says the payments were intended to “ease the burden of an extraordinarily difficult situation” and weren’t part of an effort to dissuade passengers from suing the airline. The payments came with no strings attached.

“There’s no formula except compassion,” Ms. Lardon says. “This is something that we know we will always do and so we want to be quick.”

An initial $5,000 seems to be becoming the standard for terrifying airline accidents. After US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in New York, the airline delivered $5,000 checks to all passengers within a week.

Former US Airways officials say they settled on $5,000 while trying to refund every passenger’s fare for that flight and others they’d cancel as a result of the river landing. It was complicated, according to two executives involved. But $5,000 seemed to cover the highest cost, and US Airways thought everyone should get the same amount. The airline also offered cash cards for immediate needs, as well as later payments, and cleaned and restored personal belongings.

In many cases, airlines—historically tightfisted with customers and with few government requirements on compensation in the U.S.--have upped their compensation for inconveniences and misdeeds.
Delta Air Linesoffered thousands of dollars in retail gift cards instead of hard-to-use vouchers to get passengers to give up seats after an operational meltdown left thousands of stranded customers. Other airlines followed suit after a United passenger, David Dao, was dragged off a flight when no one would give up a seat for the airline’s miserly offer.

“Nothing kills a negative story faster than doing the right thing and making people feel treated with respect,” says John McDonald, a former airline communications executive and founder of crisis management firm Caeli Communications.

The last time Southwest broke out its accident response plan was in 2005, when a jet ran off the end of a snowy runway in Chicago and killed a 6-year-old boy in a car. Since then, the company has regularly updated the plan, based on other airline responses to emergencies and corporate lessons learned. Executives regularly hold exercises and the emergency-response team runs full-scale drills at airports.

Like most airlines, Southwest has a social-media listening team that fed real-time information to executives as the accident developed. One passenger used the plane’s Wi-Fi to broadcast the emergency live on
Facebook.
Others posted video and photos from inside the cabin once safely on the ground.

Laurie Barnett, Southwest’s managing director of communications and outreach and one of the authors of the response plan, says that information aided the response.

“A situation like that is sort of the classic fog,” Mr. Kelly says. “It does take a while to make sure we have the facts.”